Mayor Bloomberg push to extend 7 train to Jersey is promptly derailed by the MTA

The overcrowded 7 train could extend to New Jersey — but the MTA says it doesn’t have the cash to do it. (Warga, Craig NY Daily News/NY Daily News)

The Bloomberg administration's hope of extending the 7 train to New Jersey is dead on arrival.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority pulled the brakes on the proposal Wednesday hours after the city's Economic Development Corporation released a report hyping the benefits of the cross-Hudson link.

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"We don't see this as an economically viable idea," said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz, whose agency had promised earlier in the day to study the "interesting" idea.

The city study showed it is feasible to push the 7 line — which is currently being extended to the far West Side of Manhattan — to Secaucus, where it would link with other transit lines.

The engineering study did not put a prestige on the improvement. But Mayor Bloomberg said the region can't afford not to provide more ways to get around.

"Demand for travel between New Jersey and Manhattan is growing rapidly and quickly exceeding the capacity of existing transit infrastructure," Bloomberg said in a statement. "The lack of new transit investment is creating a serious and urgent threat to New York City's economic competitiveness. Extending the 7 train to Secaucus is a promising potential solution ... and is deserving of serious consideration."

The city report, done by the Parsons Brinkerhoff engineering firm, said demand for transit between New Jersey and New York will increase by nearly 40% by 2030 because of population growth.

It's not the first time the MTA has derailed the Garden State dream.

"It's not going to happen in our lifetime — it's not going to happen in anybody's lifetime," then-MTA Chairman Joe Lhota said last year.

Money is obviously an issue.

The agency's next five-year capital plan for system maintenance and ongoing expansion projects isn't even funded. The current program, which ends in 2014, is approximately $22 billion and pays for maintaining the MTA's subway, bus and commuter train system, and ongoing expansion projects like the first-leg of the Second Ave. subway.

The MTA had to borrow heavily to fund that program.

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The city, not the MTA, is paying more than $2 billion to extend the 7 line from Times Square to the Hudson Yards — but the extension will have only one new station because of a lack of funding when it opens next year.